‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 Premiere Mini Recap: The Dragons Come Home to Roost

Warning: This mini recap for the “Dragonstone” episode of Game of Thronescontains spoilers.

No matter your situation in life, it’s hard to achieve your goals without a nice, quiet place to call home. And when your goal is nothing less than world domination, you’ll need a damn castle. In this week’s long-awaited seventh-season premiere, Game of Thrones finally gave Daenerys the keys to her new bachelorette pad: Dragonstone. “Shall we begin?”

Technically, the enormous and foreboding castle was her family’s home before they were deposed/murdered by the various warring factions of Westeros, but this dragon mansion promises to be a suitable home base for Dany’s battles to come. We’ll have to stay tuned to find out just how nice the guest suites are, and whether the place also has a screening room or a bowling alley. But the important thing is, Daenerys is home.

Overall, the Season 7 premiere was less “Holy F!” and more “Huh, yeah, that seems about right.” Most of the plotlines moved reasonably forward without delivering anything too shocking. We got a knee-slapper of a cold open when what appeared to be Walder Frey poisoning his entire group of friends and family with bad wine… Until it was revealed that he was Arya in disguise! Classic Arya. So if you were wondering if a tiny teenage woman can successfully impersonate a spindly, elderly crone man, yes she can.

Up in Winterfell, John and Sansa bickered a little bit over how to rule over their allies before, you know, staring deeply into each other’s eyes and igniting millions of pages of uncomfortable, erotic fanfic. Tormund, for his part, remains very horny towards a frowning Brienne. In other words, yes an apocalyptic zombie horde was currently en route (including several GIANT White Walkers), but living people still need some lovin’.

Despite the most shocking incident of the Season 6 finale occurring in King’s Landing (Cersei’s terrorist attack on her own city), our follow-up visit to Cersei’s world proved relatively chill: Jaime seemed mildly annoyed at his sister/lover’s ill-gotten reign, but was admittedly wowed by the huge, beautiful mural of Westeros she’d had painted on the courtyard patio. (It definitely made her explanation of how they were surrounded by haters on all sides more understandable.) But will Cersei’s desire to gain new allies force her into a marriage with Theon’s shady uncle? Stay tuned.

Other plotlines included: Samwell’s new job cleaning bed pans in the Citadel; The Hound and his Lord of Light posse staring into the fire and getting on the same page about the White Walker threat; Bran and Meera gaining entry into Castle Black; and also Daenerys and her team are now wearing matching black pleather outfits like they’re a fantasy-medieval cosplay act in The Matrix? Trust me, it’s chic.

Also, singer Ed Sheeran showed up for some reason?

Anyway, there’s way more to talk about, so check back shortly for our full Game of Thrones photo recap!